Finding Foliage: Maine (Archives)

"Cranberry County" is a purposefully ambiguous term. While it is technically Southeastern Massachusetts, we can (and will) expand when we need to.

Much like Hunter Thompson said about the code of the west, "Cranberry County" can mean "whatever we need it to mean, in a pinch."

Today, it means Maine.

This was very much aimless rambling, so I apologize in advance for not being like "That's Mount So-and-So." I don't go to Maine much, and the names of places tend to escape me.

I'm very good at SE Massachusetts town names, but Ive been banging around this part of the state professionally for a while. Even then, I just got my first visits in to places like Rehoboth and Somerset during last year's foliage articles.

I don't feel bad about that. A lot of Southeastern Masschusetts is on the If You Ain't From Here, You Don't Come here tip. That's not aggressive, just utilitarian.

Ideally, we'd have waited a few weeks and got into that Currier & Ives stuff, but I'm a busy man.

Maine, as you know, turns their foliage over before Massachusetts does. It gets colder up there sooner or something, I'm not that into tree science for a guy who writes about them as often as I do. I just like to look.

I'm assuming that we'll hit New Hamster about when the foliage is right, we sort of made it Maine when circumstances put us there.

To ensure that we get every last drop out of Rolling Stone writers, I've heard P.J. O'Rourke describe Norway as "God got carried away with the winter recipe for Northern Maine."

We will be moving South from Maine with the deepening of Autumn. We'll be in New Hampshire pretty soon, Northern Massachusetts a bit after that, and we're even trying to work Vermont. I'm not above sub-contracting it if need be.

We may even throw Rhode Island in the mix, I'm not sure if they turn over before or after Cape Cod does.

We won't make it to Connecticut, but if we do, you can almost bet that the pictures will be very Foxwoodsian.